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March 7 - March 8, 2022
If you pull that card, you’re resorting to compliance and confessing your inability to motivate and summon discretionary effort. What about commitment? How do you get people to want to perform? We’ve been asking that question for millennia and we know at least one thing: people need contributor safety.
Key concept: Speaking first when you hold positional power softly censors your team.
One of the most powerful things you can do to engender contributor safety is help the members of your team think beyond their individual roles.
Key principle: The invitation to think beyond one’s role expresses greater respect for the individual and grants greater permission to contribute.
Remember, you set the tone for your team’s mode of execution. If you’re not a leader by position and must lead by influence only, which is the case for most of us, create contributor safety in the same way.
The level of contributor safety on your team is expressed by the invitation to contribute that you extend to each person to jump into action.
Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. —Martin Luther King Jr.
In all social units, the cultural layer is the single most difficult thing to change and the layer that changes last.
Challenger safety is a level of psychological safety so high that people feel empowered to challenge the status quo, leaving their comfort zones to put a creative or disruptive idea on the table, which by definition, is a threat to the way things are done and therefore a risk to themselves personally.
As a result, some leaders believe that psychological safety is nothing more than asking people to be nice, under the assumption that they need to be coddled before they can be expected to engage.
Those who say that psychological safety is nothing more than sympathetic and sentimental slush offered by leaders who are unwilling to hold others accountable are in denial themselves. They refuse to acknowledge that you can’t coerce or manipulate innovation. The process is surrounded by political and interpersonal risk. Unless you lower or remove those barriers to entry and those violations in human interaction, people simply will not engage at full capacity.
With inclusion safety, you’re asking to be included; with learner safety, you’re asking to be encouraged; with contributor safety, you’re asking for autonomy; but with challenger safety, the social exchange has now gone to another level: The team is asking you to challenge the status quo. That’s a mighty ask!
Innovation is not some kind of frictionless, comfortable process. No, innovation is doing violence to the current regime. It’s willfully knocking yourself out of orbit. It’s trading certainty for ambiguity.
Candor for cover means that you as the leader protect each person’s right to speak candidly about any topic, provided they don’t make personal attacks or have malicious intent. When people feel protected in that right, they tend to exercise that right (see table 7).
The definition of respect in the fourth stage of psychological safety is “respect for the individual’s ability to innovate.” Like the definitions of respect for learner safety and contributor safety, respect at this level is an earned right rather than an innate right. Thus, you earn the right to innovate based on a track record of performance. Am I saying you shouldn’t have a voice until you become an expert? No, everyone should have a voice, but you will naturally find that people will take you seriously if that voice has credibility behind it.
In an atmosphere of challenger safety, we take all comers and all contributions. We may take some challenges more seriously than others as we consider the source, but we honor each person’s offering regardless of hierarchy. We make it safe to criticize. Everyone is expected to engage in disruptive thinking.
Even if you frame challenging the status quo as expressing healthy dissatisfaction, it’s still subversive and always a personal risk. No cover, no candor. People will come up with defensive routines to save themselves from the risk of embarrassment.6 And if they make mistakes, they will be sorely tempted to cover them up.
Key concept: The more unknowns the leader eliminates through transparency, the fewer sources of stress the employee worries about.
Innovation means looking into the foggy future and trying to make something better by connecting things that are not normally connected using divergent, lateral, associative, or nonlinear thinking. You basically have three options. You can connect
Key concept: In the process of innovation, learning is more important than knowing.
Learning is the process of combining knowledge assets, but those assets are constantly becoming obsolete. In the long run, an enduring and adaptable learning process is more valuable than the perishable knowledge assets themselves.
Key concept: Innovation is the process of connected people connecting things.
innovation usually has a social origin.
Psychological safety requires both respect and the permission to participate. One without the other creates a dangerous imbalance that hurts people in different ways.
When you’re controlled by extrinsic motivation, you look outside yourself for punishments or rewards.3 You’re stripped of autonomy and, in the process, an internal impetus to action.
Love yourself first. Give yourself inclusion safety—the respect and permission you inherently deserve. If others won’t give you psychological safety, you must at least give it to yourself as you work to change your circumstances.
Be alert to the motives of those around you. If you observe others acting maliciously toward you, even if it’s mild, act early to confront the behavior or remove yourself from the situation.
Don’t believe that you must accept abusive treatment. That’s a lie. Do everything in your power to protect yourself.
Learn resilience in your resistance. As you work to liberate yourself from unhealthy treatment, fight back in healthy ways. Because of the hurt, anger, guilt, self-hatred, and anguish people suffer as a result of social and emotional persecution, they often resort to equally unhealthy response patterns. That just makes things worse. Avoid drugs and all forms of self-harm and self-indulgence. Don’t heap more hurt on yourself.
If you feel dominated, controlled, or trapped, with no apparent means of escape, search for a way out or leave immediately. In the meantime, refuse to entertain damaging thoughts about yourself. You can eventually heal and overcome everything.
Find and connect with trustworthy, happy people who genuinely want your success and are willing to help. Consult with them as you make decisions and consider options.
The more we create psychological safety, the more we enjoy the rewards of rich connection, belonging, and collaboration. The less we create it, the more we suffer the bitterness and sting of isolation.
Psychological safety is built on a moral foundation of looking on our fellow creatures with respect and giving them permission to belong and contribute.
“The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.”12 It’s connection that in the end brings us sustained happiness. With its restorative and healing powers, cultivating relationships is the one nonpharmaceutical therapy, the one redemptive act, that continues to bring us the most joy.
The primary characteristic of this new variety is an individual who possesses superb emotional intelligence with a highly controlled ego.
A growing body of research confirms that emotional intelligence creates psychological safety in the organization, which, as a mediating variable, accelerates innovation.
Thus, the leader of the twenty-first century must be able to thrive in this context as an example of collaboration, creative abrasion, and humility.
the CEO of Microsoft, expressed the spirit of psychological safety and the path to inclusion and innovation: “Together, we must embrace our shared humanity, and aspire to create a society that is filled with respect, empathy, and opportunity for all.”13
Inclusion safety: Are you prepared to cross the threshold of inclusion, bridge differences, and invite others into your society?
Learner safety: Are you prepared to encourage others to learn?
Contributor safety: Are you prepared to give others the autonomy to contribute and deliver results?
Challenger safety: And finally, are you prepared to cross the threshold of innovation and provide air cover for others to challenge the status quo and innovate?
The greatest source of fulfillment in life comes from including others, helping them learn and grow, unleashing their potential, and finding deep communion together. That’s the lesson.
